Sunday, August 25, 2013

Letter to the Autonomous People's Assembly of Montreal (APAM)

We have serious
questions about APAM’s very existence, on its activism and its strong leftist
composition. APAM arose amidst the stagnation, if not the very retreat of a
mass movement. It was formed by a tiny minority without support from the
majority of the Popular Assemblies Autonomous District (APAQ). Here, we’re
talking about a ‘city-wide’ organization, not a neighbourhood assembly.

In the text The organization of the proletariat outside periods of open struggle which is attached to our brochure, The
Student Struggle and the Neighbourhood Assemblies, we call into question this type of committee in a period of decline or
absence of real mass struggles. These committees tend to descend into activism
as shown by the participation of APAM in the May 1 demonstration or that of May
22, with predictable results. This is why they, the committees, circles, and
proletarian groups must be careful to avoid them.
They also tend to fall into the following traps : * imagining that they constitute a structure which can prepare
the way for the appearance of strike committees or councils ;

*
imagining themselves to be invested with a sort of ‘potentiality’ which can
develop future struggles. (It isn’t the minorities who artificially create a
strike or cause a General Assembly or a committee to appear, even though they
do have an active intervention to make in this process) ;

*
giving themselves a platform or statutes or anything else that risks freezing
their evolution and thus condemning them to political confusion ;
* presenting themselves as intermediate organs,
half-way between the class and a political organisation, as if they were an
organisation that is at one and the same time unitary and political ;

-
Extract from the
organization of the proletariat outside periods of open struggles

The APAM could have been very useful in spring /summer of 2012, while there was
still a mass movement. In spring 2012, members of Klasbatalo (CIK) and APA-RPP
(a Montreal neighbourhood Assembly) proposed the creation of APAM but the
majority of the assembly, influenced by anarchist political positions, refused.
As individuals, and with scepticism, we still participated in APAM in December,
as it came at the end of the period of open struggle .

In short, for the moment, it is more important to our members and our group to
focus our energies towards the consolidation of internationalist communist
forces worldwide. We won’t be participating in APAM.

Contact us

Email: klasbatalo1917@gmail.com

Student struggle and Assemblies of neighbourhouds

This booklet won’t go into a precise chronology of the 2012 student strike. Instead, what we’ll present is a political analysis of the struggle that unfolded last year. We intend this both as an assessment of the movement, as well as a preparatory tool for coming struggles.

Booklet From Nationalism to Internationalism

This booklet is very important for ICM as the habits and ideas acquired in Maoist groups block one’s understanding of Marxism and its implementation at the level of class struggle and the internal organizations of Left Communism.